Forum Moderators: open
The update or what was formerly known as the update - is over for this month. On behalf of the other 99,900 members of webmasterworld - please, lets move on!
Well, I would like to apologize for resurrecting this issue. However, I have lurked in the forums for the past few months, but never saw any evidence to support this statement. I'm sure many others are similarily confused.
Can the current flucuations in the SERPs be explained by: a result of an ongoing update or an exaggerated form of Everflux or something else (which requires a new label)?
So, on behalf of the other confused members of webmasterworld, please take a moment to explain your reasoning on this issue. Thanks for your patience.
(Added 5 minutes later) I never intended to start another dinosaur of a thread. PLEASE no superfluous quips, no updates on the current SERPs, only attempts to answer the question posed. (No wonder Esmeralda threads get a bad reputation!)
[edited by: Umbra at 7:12 am (utc) on July 2, 2003]
The only one who could clarify this unfortunately keeps very calm.
Asked for a rating, I would say it isn't a rolling update but of course this is not confirmed.
Agreed, and thank you - let's not. :)
Keeping it real short and sweet, the spidering and update pattern appears to have changed with no indication of exactly what it is, and it looks like Esmeralda is about as done as it ever will be. It looks like we'll continue to see wide fluctuations as Fresh listing continues, and there's not a clue to be had as to whether there will ever again be an update as we came to know them over time.
>>something different is happening
Ah, but something different is happening at least a few times a day and we can expect more of the same tomorrow and the day after and the day after, ad infinitum.
>>I'm sure many others are similarily confused.
Count me in on that one! If all this was Google's deliberate attempt to do something drastic and confusing enough to stop people from trying to optimize sites, hats off to them - they've done a good job of it, it's liable to *almost* work.
Probably the kindest favor we can do for ourselves at this point in time is resign ourselves to accepting that what we're seeing now will be what we'll continue to be seeing and leave it at that.
I have a site which dropped out of the listings last month. I think this is because I had placed a 301 redirect to another domain, and freshbot was unable to get the new pages (though it managed to throw away the old listings OK).
So I am in the unusual position of having a very well established, good PR site which has almost no listings with Google.
The site is currently (finally) being crawled in a deepbot-like manner, as others have noticed. The listings from the previously unlisted pages are appearing in the index 1 to 2 days after being crawled, but there is no fresh date and they are not then disappearing again as I would expect from fresh listings.
So, in answer to the question, I think this is an ongoing update.
However I have noted two new sites popping up in the top positions for this keyword which weren't around before. Neither has quality or number of links to earn them their positions. Both however have the keyword in the domain with a hyphen. Seems to me therefore that hyphenated keywords are now huge.
Some sites are back at their 'top' rankings.
Some [older] sites have their index pages gone.
Some newer sites are being hammered [hundreds of pages being indexed].
And some newer sites are not even being touched [just call up robots.txt and then run away].
What lends credance most to a rolling update is the fact that all the datacenters seem to be permanently in a sort of flux .. its like they are independent entities acting on their own, updating as they please.
From what I observed, what is different on the nine data centers, on google.de on yahoo.de and yahoo.com.
Name is found or not found depending if the abbreviated second name is used or not used. (German customization in yahoo)
Keywords are given preference, depending from where you search from (German name is given preference over a US-site with much higher page-rank.
a page is found on two keywords used on a page put in huge distance from each other (that was a very bad result for the user), next day looking up the keywords the page can be found nowhere and search results are o.k. from the users point of view.
So I guess, google is playing around with improving the searches for users independent of page rank. This of course could be used the other way round. Giving users what is intended.
Seems to me therefore that hyphenated keywords are now huge.
Keyword domain names are huge. widgets.com is worth money again - these seem to be the only stable sites in the SERPS at the moment and rank highly whether content rich or not.
Hyphenated domains are probably slightly less huge, but huge nonetheless.
I have not yet worked out whether this relates to inbound anchor text, or a penalty on inbound anchor text where the anchor text keywords are not in the domain name - i.e. is it a positive boost for keyword.com or a negative penalty for "Click here for widgets" pointing at "brandname.com".
TJ
My take on it is that its a "ongoing-everflux-update:)". I mean "REALLY" who the heck knows.....
teeceo.
Esmeralda never ended at all, despite what some here are saying. The wild fluctuations seem, at times, to be completely unrelated to updated content or new links. It is almost as if Google just randomly places pages in and out of the SERPS.
I have been staring at a page #1 on www2 and www3 for the past 4 days that has not made it to www. Many of the nine datacenters still have very different indexes.
I doubt this will end. My suggestion is to have as many sites out there as you can muster. When one drops to oblivion, the others may pop up out of nowhere.
2 other interesting, related questions.
How does the jumbling/rescoring of pages on an houry/daily basis help: Google, Searchers, Webmasters, or Google partners?
How are the nine datacenters now used? They appear to each have different algos or data.
[edited by: mfishy at 11:51 am (utc) on July 2, 2003]
What if Google is simply clustering keywords, spidering relevant sites, updating SERPS then moving on to a new cluster?
It may be in chunks. Such as maybe backlinks are added every 9 days or so. Also, it is possible that Google is counting backlinks that don't show in the link: command. That command always has shown just some of the inbound links.
Then there is a new problem and thats the freshbot sometimes digg deeper for new pages, so I hope this HUGE everflux rotations will stop soon.
In Computer a German mag. it also says that Google is number one, but the results are not that good anymore.
zeus
Just my 2 cents! :-)
Also, it is possible that Google is counting backlinks that don't show in the link: command.
Is there any other way to check backlinks on Google? I know you can on AllTheWeb, etc. I am missing a BUNCH and it is effecting me bad. I don't think your theory on this one is correct, because if they were counting them but not showing them, my index page would be ranking - and it's not. Google isn't even picking up my DMOZ listing that has been there since November.
Official word from GG will hopefully come soon *nudge*
a result of an ongoing update or an exaggerated form of Everflux or something else (which requires a new label)?
There's three things that seem to have been ignored - or rather, the three things seem to have been mixed into one. Clearly this makes it a bit harder, albeit still not impossible, to get any sense out of the posts on this topic:
What tends to be discussed most is #3 - it is however totally irrelevant for most posts (not all), as stages 1 and 2 are the ones that actually decide what shows up at point #3.
With one additional ingredient. G corporate policy and strategy towards users, business partners and so on. Some things about this, as well as about #2 and #1, can be guessed from observation of point 3, but not all.
In this community, we (well, some of us) monitor #3 and we monitor #1 (at least the parts of #1 that we know about) - the one in-between is at least partly published. Partly, because what was once true need not be so always. What has not (yet?) been published, along with G corporate strategy is, at least it seems so to me, the reason why it's not quite that predictable anymore.
Some new spicy ingredients may just have been added to the Google soup. Figuring out what those ingredients are, in what amount they are added, and if the amount is constant, is the really interesting part. The current serps are not.
/claus
I'm seeing 'sites' that breach most (if not all) of Googles published TOS - many of which have been buried at the bottom of the index historically - but are now getting solid page one listings. they have just floated right back up to the top....
I suspect the 'new spam filters' we heard so much about a few months back didn't work - and they got pulled. Because if they are 'working' - then the whole things busted.
Right now, all you need is a three-or-four-word-domain-name, a couple hundred words of text, and a copy of your favourite page generator software - and you win the serps for the phrases of your choice.
So my current opinion is that its is broken; they are still trying to fix it; there is no ETA, but please remain seated and don't panic. Its Everflush.
:)
For the set I watch, the last two days have been solid across all datacenters.
I have not seen that type of stabilty for several months.
The spam is gone as well.
For another set I look at, there still is flux but it is minor. Nothing compared to what it was a week ago.
I don't know how my cell phone works but it does and that is all that matters. Google is movin' and so is my site, but it doesn't change what I work on with my sites...
Seems to me therefore that hyphenated keywords are now huge.
I can give some insite into this as I WM 15 sites daily, 11 of which are hypenated keyword domains (green-widgets.com) with the non hyphenated domain name (greenwidgets.com) redirected to them.
While Esmerelda has restored some of the lost high positions of these sites, most are still suffering. Several of these sites that used to rank in the top five positions for 90% of the keyword phrases and in the top two postisions for their primary keyword phrase are still back at page 13 for the primary (atleast 5 of the sites). In all actuality the only site that in my control that has not experianced any fluctuation at all, I mean 0%, is a nonhyphenated domain.
I believe that the bulk of the postition loss I have experianced is due to dropped links. I have watched all of the sites loss 75% + of their links from sites I know for a fact that still link.
The moral of my story is don't put that much credence in the hyphenated keyord domains. They may help a little, but they are not immune either.
I believe that the bulk of the postition loss I have experianced is due to dropped links. I have watched all of the sites loss 75% + of their links from sites I know for a fact that still link.
aaronjf....
Ohhh I am SO glad to hear you say that. That is exactly what I think too. I don't know about you, but I'm missing BIG ones, DMOZ, Yahoo, a handful of PR8's, and others.
Now, lets try and figure out *why* the links are missing. I have absolutely NO idea. I seriously think this reason may effect others too.
